Fiction

Real and Unreal People

Those who have read the bitter and exquisite stories in A Tiny Seed of Love will gladly receive Sense and Sensuality, the

first novel of Sarah Salt. Most of them will admire ; but some will be disappointed. Her effortless introductions, the

impersonal brilliance with which she induces her characters, to confess the maladies and follies of their nerves, her .acute

divination of ultimate moments, compel sincere appreciation of her craft. But her personages, on the whole, do not live with the fierce actuality of the figures in her first book. They belong to that effete semi-literary group which exists, it is said, somewhere in Bloomsbury—the disintegrated creatures, who, powerless for good or evil, consume stingless cocktails in dull cafes, dance somnambulistically with weary feet, and vainly try to shock themselves into life. Richard Lavender is a most unconvincing publisher ; but he loves his wife Laura, a kind of attractive pagan with restless nerves. Laura is slightly hectic because she is threatened with T.B. ; but she .

loves Richard. They maintain a pose of modern indifference ; , yet, when Richard carelessly slides into an unmotived little affair with the silly April, Laura's agony blinds her. In the

perveraity. and fever of her illness she repays his infidelity in kind, though the good angel in her heart struggles desperately to forgive. The situation, when the tortured husband and wife realize what they have done to love, is a harrowing im- passe, for both are devoted to their child. Laura, borne away

by " galloping consumption," to the tune of Dance, dance, dance, little lady," seems to cheat the reader of the solution by a startlingly Victorian method. The friends and acquaint- ances of the pair are drawn with sure unswerving strokes, though

they are artificial types, whose affectations have ceased to interest. Prude, the_ little girl, is charming in her brief in- cursions. But the best chapters in the book are provided by the letters of " poor old Nurse Merryweather," who, all unconsciously, draws a self-portrait ruthless as a Van Eyck.

Evidently the author of White Man's Saga has a style, but whether his gift is destined to perfect itself in the novel is still uncertain; His characters also are incoherent and artificial, . though some of them inhabit for awhile a city more than most

places hostile to the unreal. Mr. Linklater's mood seems purely Scandinavian ; perhaps that is why his book is so sing- ularly un-Scottish, except when he is at home in the remote and non-Celtic Orkneys. " White-Maa " (white gull) is Peter Flat, who, after being an officer in the War, hazily

decides to take a medical degree at Inverdoon. He does, not succeed, which is not surprising, since he spends his time in ** pub-crawls," boxing, and flirtations with two or three girls whose Bloomsbury-like remarks sound alien in the Northern air. Besides, he would rather be a Viking. Peter

is a violent ill-mannered person; but that, of course, is due to the War. In the end he kills a man on desert Hoy, and resolves to go to Vancouver with Norna, his Orkney love.

Some Of the descriptions of seas and skies and atmospheres, of a Beethoven symphony, and an island hoUse of slightly exotic peace, are written with a refinement and a poignancy of.

feeling which do not yet penetrate the characterization, but Which make the book attractive as well as_ irritating. With Heal People Mr. Beresford seems to promise some breathing traffickers with delight. and sorrow; and time was When the story would have fulfilled the title. Alas ! 112 still'

cleaves to that vague mysticism which has blurred his artistic vision. If only it were the definite kind ! From Dr. Charles Moore, with his dim melancholy and his power of " intuitional diagnOsis " we are averse, nor do we understand why his prediction of the death of a doddering duke should give him sudden peace. Fortunately much of the book is concerned with the experimental engagement of Lord Bobbie, the duke's son and Joanna Moore. Joanna is merely taking refuge from the determined attentions of a very disagreeable young scientist, but Bobbie's delicate and amusing courtship secures his lady in marriage. The conversation is often diverting, though; towards the end, everybody, including Bobbie, takes to long speeches.

Ramon Guthrie's Parachute is distinctly a " modern " novel by virtue of its verve and audacity ; it vibrates and dips and soars like its aeroplanes. Whatever else be its merits and defects, it does make you feel that the two chief char- acters have been made and marred by the new world of ex- perience in the air. Tony Rickey, " the big Wop from Peoria," a creature of power, insolence, friendly devotion, with a touch of Cellini in him, has his natural daring and braggadocio altered into something hawklike and godlike. Harvey Sayles, who has had three planes burned under him, cures his frantic neurasthenia awhile by descents in the parachute that " unfolds like a great white lotus flower." The scandals and comedies of the aviators' convalescent hospital seem to bringaerude but unfamiliar note into the stale chronicle of war. This account of energetic and violent folk, written by an author whose mind dwells with equal ease on the finished cameo-profiles of history, should yield an original sensation. These queer, stinging, sometimes painful, people are certainly alive.

The Sable and the Girl, by Joseph Weyssenhoff, is a pre-War Polish novel of great popularity. The scene is laid among the forests and marshes of Lithuania : some love-scenes break the monotony of the endless tales of hunting. Michael, the young noble who dares not wed the lovely Varshulka, a kind of Lithuanian Tess, is indeed a Nimrod. He hunts the boar, the wolf, the fox. He kills the wild duel: mothering her young, the blackeock in their lovesong. lle brings down cock-pheasants when they are so close as to make a cloud of colour. The descriptions of the great woods and the islets of alder set with reeds are often beautiful ; but the sport at which Michael assists is too like Massacre. And when we leave him forgetting the loss of Varshulka in the expectation of shooting a rushing fox we have had more than enough of him.

RACHEL ANNAN]) tAYLOH.